The Islamic leaders of Iran see it as their duty to create the environment called for in a centuries-old hadith for the reappearance of the last Islamic messiah for the glorification of Allah:

In the last days chaos, famine and havoc will engulf the Earth. Major wars with dark clouds (atomic wars) will burn the Earth. One-third of the Earth’s population will be killed and the rest will suffer hunger and lawlessness.

Though an EMP attack on America by the jihadists in Tehran must not be ruled out, our modern society in America could also be endangered by a natural phenomenon. Solar explosions from the sun have hit the Earth before and will do so again. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that a major solar storm could hit in May of 2013. A similar storm in 1859, known as the “Carrington event,” hit telegraph offices worldwide, causing failure in the telegraph system. Today such an event could be catastrophic due to the role microchips play in our infrastructure.

We can avoid such catastrophes if we, as responsible citizens of the United States, take action. The SHIELD Act (H.R. 668), currently before the U.S. House, needs to be passed this year. If it isn’t, it could very well be too late to protect the national electric grid.

The SHIELD Act would empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to work with industry and other government departments and agencies to protect the national electric grid from EMP threats. The act would ensure that the United States has enough extra-high-voltage transformers to survive and recover from an EMP event.

The act also would provide a financial mechanism to pay for the protection of the grid. The FERC estimates that the cost for protecting the electric grid would add only 20 cents to the annual bill of the average rate-payer for a period of three years.

It is critical that we call on our political leaders to take action and protect America. If we fail, we have only ourselves to blame.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

Thanks for that brilliant observation. Of course no sane Iranians would do this; it’s the insane ones that are in charge of the government and the military, and they’ve been killing and imprisoning the sane ones for years.

Unfortunately, like every other country, Iran has its insane people. And like every other country, some of them find their way into positions of influence and power.

This is not the time to be complacent.

The FBI is aware of the danger of EMP weapons and is concerned about it. Private industry and the public, not so much. We need to start working on shielding all of our infrastructure, including our motor vehicles and our communications devices, and we haven’t even begun to do that.

All I’m trying to say here is that the US government is AWARE of these dangers. I never claimed that they have the wherewithal to protect us from them. Those are two different issues! The FBI and the DHS are tasked with trying to prevent anybody from setting off an EMP weapon where it could affect us, such as on a container ship. I have no knowledge as to whether they truly have the ability to prevent such attacks.

The private sector, on the other hand, is still largely unaware of the danger of EMP, either from a foreign enemy or from the sun. It’s a matter of educating people, to build consumer demand for items (such as motor vehicles, important household appliances, and communications devices) that can withstand EMP.

All of our communications and utility and energy distribution networks (not limited to the power grid – I’m even talking about our gas pumps) need to be evaluated for their ability to withstand EMP. Any company that does not want to be put permanently out of business by a likely future solar event should consider this.

Unfortunately, Ali, we cannot trust that the Iranian government will refrain from either initiating or sponsoring terrorist attacks. Given the numerous public pronouncements by Iranian heads of state threatening just such actions against Israel and against western nations — especially the U.S. — we would be fools to leave ourselves unprepared.

“Dr. Horvath, I take it you’ve never been involved in military intelligence? No, of course not. But you see, in intelligence work we have to go by capabilities, not by intentions. If a potential enemy can do something to you, you have to prepare for it, without regard to what you think he wants to do.”

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God’s Eye

I also second Sefton and others who point out that the Iranian leadership is quite capable of this. They’re not insane– they have a very finely calibrated sense of self-interest. They just have no moral scruples about any innocents (their own or especially Americans) who might have to die to advance their own sense of their national interests.

If a strike could be reasonably deniable, then why not do it? US public opinion would stop mattering with the end of TV and the internet, but a reasonably deniable attack would make it hard for the US to know which enemy to retaliate against. It’s not like a nearly paralyzed US would be able to conduct much of an investigation. The international community would suddenly have a lot of leverage against us– as the only sources of humanitarian aid, they could well restrain us until an international investigation is complete (something almost guaranteed to prevent retaliation no matter what the outcome).

With America gone, China would own east Asia, Russia would control Eastern Europe and the caucuses. The world would devolve to regional spheres of influence and their local hegemons. Iran would not automatically control the middle east, but without American retaliation as a threat, a nuclear first strike to eliminate Israel and take the mideast for themselves becomes a real option.

In fact, there’s so many powers that might benefit from this, some already nuclear, that if it happens there really will be confusion about which enemy actually pulled the trigger. For US citizens, the question will be academic.

The solution is collective responsibility- when in doubt, we will launch a full scale nuclear retaliation against ALL our enemies. The burden of proof will be on them to prove they DIDN’T do it, and if the White House is not satisfied within a matter of hours, every major city and military target gets vaporized.

Iran would have plausible deniability because the strike itself can be launched from a relatively small, non-military type ship in international waters near our coastline. They could launch, scuttle the ship, and be long gone before anyone could investigate.

At that point, no one can say which country hit us, or if it was even a country – it could have been a terrorist group.

The US can’t go nuking Iran in retaliation, when they aren’t even sure where the strike came from.

The U.S. military has a lot of infrastructure and equipment that is protected (EMP-hardened), as do our allies. The protection of other infrastructure is inconsistent, and some areas would be better off than others. For the most part, civilian infrastructure would likely sustain heavy damage.

It is likely that we would know the perpetrator very quickly, given all of the protected areas and equipment and NSA, satellites and other spook agencies. Also, EMP is a nuclear blast (a non-nuclear EMP would be more localized), and would have to be launched to a minimum of about 40 to 50 kilometers, I believe, meaning the launch would absolutely be detected immediately, and would not be coming from a freighter off the coast. It would take a launch to over 400 kilometers to effect the entire continental U.S. The country that created it would quickly be vaporized, as this would be a nuclear attack on the U.S.

The damage done would depend on the altitude and magnitude of the blast. But we would know who did it pretty quickly. The list of suspects with the capability is not long.

Ali. Not only is this in the Iranian playbook, but in their stated goals. You must know about the resurgance of the 12th Imam (Satan) and that the world must be washed in blood and chaos to bring his return. This is the philosophy and the goal of the Iranian leadership, both religious and political. The Ayatollah has said the the Mahdi will return this year. Sanity??? Its not about sanity, its about the religion of men that would rather die in the name of Allah than to live.

Wikipedia actually has a good analysis of the EMP threat and its history. According to theorist Immanuel Velikovsky, there are some poorly understood aspects of physics that could also be catastrophic and weaponized.

And also according to Velikovsky (in “Worlds in Collision”), Venus was once a comet.

I find it difficult to put much confidence in any theories promulgated by someone whose theories of astrophysics are based on the inability to tell the difference between a relatively small “dirty snowball”, and a fairly large stony body (i.e., a planet).

No do I have much confidence in anyone who takes Hans Horbiger’s theories seriously- and Velikovsky did. (Velikovsky’s “catastrophic change” cosmology was basically Horbiger’s “Eternal Ice” minus the “Ice” part.)

I honestly think that this is one of the most serious threats we face as a nation, that and cyber attack. People take electrical power for granted, until it’s gone. There is a great book on the subject called “One Second After” by William R. Forstchen which discusses the matter in great length. And it is a very, very, scary book. An EMP attack on this nation would have devestating effects and could be launched by other major countries as well, such as China. We would be foolish to ignore this threat and the sooner we embrace legislation like The SHIELD Act (H.R. 668), the sooner we can better prepare ourselves against this mounting threat. Time is NOT on our side in this matter. We must act soon because, if it does happen, we certainly would be doomed.

You are correct about the EMP threat. That is a far worse threat than any cyber attack.

I predict that China will NOT be the source of this threat. We are China’s trading partner, and it would be suicidal for their economy to cripple ours to that extent. The same is true for other large non-Muslim countries, such as Russia, India, or Brazil. None of them have any ideological motivation for launching such an attack on us.

The danger will come from Iran, Pakistan, or another Muslim country, or possibly from a Muslim non-state terrorist organization.

Ham Radio operators often keep spare equipment in protected
storage, i.e., disconnected and somewhat shielded. Furthermore,
older equipment is less susceptable (discrete transisters and tubes).
Furthermore, an emp attack won’t neccesarily take out the entire
US – consider the fact that the Earth is a ball and the US lies
on a curved surface.

Ham Radio operators have a system called “Winlink” that provides
email via radio links. These links can span great distances (thousands
of miles). Winlink is distributed and very resiliant. This system
works quite well and has been operating for years.

New Hams are no longer required to learn Morse Code. So, anybody
with just a smidge of technical ability can study, pass the written
test, and get a Ham license. (Morse Code is still widely used and
is very effective in adverse conditions.)

I work with a large number of pilots, both military and commercial. Their aircraft get struck by lightning on a frequent basis and yet they do not fall out of the sky. IIRC, lightning is several orders of magnitude greater in intensity to an EMP, and the aircraft’s skin acts as a Faraday Cage….

Actually, no. Lightning does generate an EMP, but not of the magnitude that a nuclear burst does. The electrical path through the skin of the aircraft isn’t the issue: the EMP coupling through the antennae is the main problem. This would overload the usual lightning protection arresters and burn out the receivers. An EMP would also get through the windows and get into the aircraft’s avionics via the internal aircraft wiring.

The main problem groundside is the power grid. All of those electrical transmission wires make dandy antennae; an EMP coupling into the power grid blows right through the transformers and usual lighting protection and overloads all of the power supplies. Perhaps more importantly, from the power company’s point of view, it would take out the various pieces of electronics that are attached to the power grid that control its various functions.

Military systems are hardened against EMP as a matter of course. Doing so is expensive, though, and commercial owners are reluctant to spend the money required to achieve that degree of protection against an, admittedly, unlikely occurrence, unless prodded to do so by the government.

Good use of stimulus $? Not advocating that, but if the $ are going to be spent, might as well do something actually useful. If we could somehow formulate it in a way that would benefit unions, it would be a slam-dunk for the administration to support it.

While a military attack of this type is somewhat unlikely, the same is NOT true of a solar flare. As the article above says:

“Solar explosions from the sun have hit the Earth before and will do so again. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that a major solar storm could hit in May of 2013. A similar storm in 1859, known as the “Carrington event,” hit telegraph offices worldwide, causing failure in the telegraph system. Today such an event could be catastrophic due to the role microchips play in our infrastructure.”

This WILL happen at some point, and it’ll put everybody out of business who isn’t prepared for it.

This is like those “hundred-year floods” that keep happening in our lifetimes. Sometimes our predictions are too optimistic and the deluge was more probable than we thought it was.

As an electrical engineering student, my master’s thesis was on the subject of photon induced EMP within a large pulsed X-Ray facility, so I know a little about the subject. When I hear the hype about EMP, I think back to the Y2K impending doom senario and how it all ended up. The same will be true with the EMP scare. We are subjected to EMP on a regular basis. Gylar is correct about lightning and it’s effects. The EMP generated by lightning is very similar to that from a nuclear incident, both in pulse duration and induced E fields. When the lightning actually strikes the object in question it is many orders of magnitude worse than a nuclear EMP. The power grid has to endure lightning strikes daily, and they are equipped for it. The land line phone system is largely underground for system protection. An automobile is the safest place to be during a lightning storm, and the ignition systems are designed to prevent damage due to electric discharge (not so much the radio). The only electronics that are vulnerable to damage are those connected to an antenna and possibly a power line. EMP fields are typically in the 50,000 Volt per Meter range, so only radio equipment and power line connected equipment are likely to receive damage. Modern TVs, and computer power supplies have transient protection and will likely not suffer damage. There will be localized problems just like in Y2K, but societal collapse followed by death and destruction are not in the cards.

My brother-in-law was driving his Jeep (Liberty or Cherokee, can’t remember which) when the car was struck by lightning. All of the electronics in the car were fried. The insurance company totaled the car. Are you talking newer cars? Because this happened maybe 7 years ago.

And the sky remains up above us where it belongs because Chicken Little warned us in time to avert the problem.

(There was never going to be any huge and overwhelming Y2k computer issue beyond a bunch of dates not printing out correctly. It was all just a jobs program for psychologists and unemployed programmers.)

That’s hogwash. The problem went much further than dates not printing out correctly on a report. Dates are used throughout business IT as a key for accessing other information. Arithmetic is performed on dates to locate information based on date ranges in databases. If the date problem hadn’t been fixed, then reports and displays would have contained wrong information (or no information, if records cannot be found), not just incorrect dates.

If the innards of an integrated circuit see excess voltage,
even for a microsecond, they break down permanently.

If even a fraction of the microcomputer controlled devices in
the targeted area fail, the society which depends on them dies.

Folks, I hope you do not believe a work I just wrote, not when
you can surf the Web for an hour, compare the data and arguments
and make up your own minds; It does not take a Piled Higher and Deeper
degree to understand the basics, and to decide if the majority of those
who _do_ understand the specifics are worried.

P.S. If all the predictions about EMP attack effects are wrong, the
observed real world effects of a Carrington Event are well documented
history, so we still need to move toward a survivable infrastructure.

I honestly wonder if the Iranians (or other Islamists) are planning anything that elaborate.

Among other things, it wouldn’t be all that deniable. And while a high-altitude EMP might take out most of our civilian and commercial electronic infrastructure, it would not affect our military response because our weapon systems, military C3I, etc., have been EMP-hardened since the 1960s (a side benefit of the Cold War). Unless they are counting on The One to wimp out (which unfortunately is a high-weighted probability), they would run the risk of major military retaliation, especially if they were foolish enough to openly claim responsibility.

What concerns me is the possibility of a much “lower-tech” nuclear attack. Say, a simple, Hiroshima-type uranium “gun bomb” hidden in a cargo container, put on a ship bound for a major U.S. port like New York- with nothing but a timer and maybe some anti-disturbance devices. From the Islamists’ POV, a 10KT or so explosion in a warehouse on the East River docks would do a perfectly satisfactory job of destroying the city, and killing a multitude of “infidels”- and we’d play hell proving exactly who was responsible. (Which brings us right back to Wretchard’s 3 Conjectures- see the Belmont Club.)

Please note two things in this context;

1. You don’t need the capability to refine plutonium (Pu239/240) from uranium (U238) to build a Hiroshima-type bomb. All you need to do is refine U235 from U238- a much simpler process, that the Iranians already have working.

2. The Hiroshima bomb was never actually tested; the Trinity shot (16 July 1945) was a test of the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb design later used on Nagasaki. According to Arthur Holly Compton in “Atomic Quest” (NB: Compton was a member of Oppenheimer’s “brain trust” at Los Alamos), the reason they never bothered to do a full-on test of the uranium design was that all the sub-critical lab tests , and all the math, showed that there was basically no way for it to fail if you slammed the two subcritical masses together fast and hard enough. (The “propellant” in the Hiroshima bomb was ordinary smokeless powder- and they only put it in as the “Enola Gay” crossed the coast of Honshu, just in case.)

The proof of this isn’t just Hiroshima; it’s that since 1945, everyone who has ever tried to detonate a Hiroshima-type uranium bomb has succeeded. (India and Pakistan’s first nukes were Hiroshima-type bombs, to cite only two examples.) We don’t build them anymore because they cannot be made “one-point safe”, i.e, they cannot be engineered to insure a less than .01% chance of accidental “initiation”. Our Islamist adversaries, by comparison, would regard this as irrelevant; they aren’t interested in a long-term “deterrent” weapon, just something relatively cheap that will go “boom”.

Regarding Islamist nuclear ambitions, we may be in the position of the man so worried about someone robbing him by clever embezzlement that he fails to notice the mugger slipping up behind him as he walks past an alley.

(Note; I thought long and hard about making this post, as on the Internet, you never know who’s watching. But unless the Islamists are complete idiots, which I doubt, they’ve already worked all this out themselves. I just question whether our side has.)

Concur.Unless they are counting on The One to wimp out (which unfortunately is a high-weighted probability) This is the all-important issue. Deterrence only works if the opponent has a high expectation that you will actually carry through on your threats. That’s why the military ensures that ICBM’s and their warheads are regularly tested and of high reliability even though (ironically) if they are properly used they will never be fired. For better or worse, except for the nuclear ballistic missile subs the U.S. nuclear arsenal can only be used by direct order of the president (and even the boomers would only fire autonomously if they have reason to believe that the entire command chain has been taken out).

1.If there is a nuclear attack on the US, as characterized in your post, it can only have come from one place, Iran, or those Iran enabled. The response should be a devastating nuclear attack on that country, rendering it a non entity. No investigation of where the attack on our country came from necessary.

2. The US authorities, were worried about a dirty bomb attack, this 9/11. With Iran involved in nuclear production, they certainly are in a position to supply terrorists with the materials necessary. And I believe they would willingly do so.
War with Iran is inevitable, the only question being, do we wait until we suffer a devastating attack by them or their proxies, or do we neuter them now, while we can.
Obviously, the current President will take no action, and only empowers and enables our most dangerous enemy. We will have to wait until 2012, and hope the American people understand that Obama has to go for their own safety, and the sake of the country.

Right. There’s a good chance that the mullahs in Iran will be overthrown and that would yield a better relationship with the U.S. In Pakistan, there’s a good chance the current set-up will be overthrown, and that will yield… a fairly advanced nuclear-armed country with 3x the population of Iran and a 10x hatred of the U.S. I am increasingly convinced that we need to stop trying to mediate between India and Pakistan and let the Indians deal with them. Yes, it would complicate the situation in Afghanistan, but we threw in our lot with the Pakistanis when we thought maybe they could become real allies; today it is patently obvious that they are, for all practical purposes, hostile… and that’s even pre-Islamo-fascist takeover.

“they would run the risk of major military retaliation, especially if they were foolish enough to openly claim responsibility.”

They don’t care, dying in order to bring about world war and mass death will bring the “12th imam” to redeem them. They do not fear death but seek it.
They are not subject to nuclear deterrance like the Soviets were.

Fired from a freighter off of the East Coast, it’d be eminently deniable. Who would be able to give the Coast Guard or the Navy the information they needed to grab them for interrogation? Any tracking center would be fried and offline. Would the CG or USN even be able to chug on out to them?

Little Boy was an airburst over a city made of wood and paper. A 10 kT ground burst would not destroy any American city. It would level, at most, half a mile in every direction, probably less. The bigger concern is fallout.

Thanks for pointing this out. Nuclear weapons effects, and particularly the damage potential of small improvised nuclear devices detonated at or near ground level, are widely misunderstood, and this musunderstanding distorts policy making and expectations on every level. Here’s the supporting argument, well-developed, in Homeland Security Affairs: http://www.hsaj.org/?article=5.3.3

Hiroshima was a typical industrial city on Western patterns, with most buildings in the city center area being of reinforced-concrete construction. The Little Boy bomb, with an actual yield of approximately 17.5KT (vs. predicted 10 to 11 KT), detonated at 5,000 ft AGL. The structures in question suffered relatively little external damage, but near-total destruction of interiors due to blast entry through windows and doors plus subsequent fires. Earthquake-resistant structures (common in the area) suffered little wall damage, but the roofs were depressed and the interiors destroyed.

The major factor contributing to these results were Japanese building codes instituted after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Buildings were limited to a height of 30 meters (about 100 feet), and they were designed to withstand a lateral force equal to 10% of their maximum vertical (foundation)load. Also, diaphragm stiffening of internal structures was standard. Generally, more important and newer ( i.e., post-1923) buildings had all of the above features, older or less important buildings may or may not have had them done during post-1923 renovations.

A ground burst of about 10KT would not “destroy” an American city. It would, however, have effects equivalent to a full-bore hurricane or, to us Midwesterners, a maximum-strength tornado. With the addition of thermal and flash effects, plus fallout; surface bursts generate more due to the dispersion of irradiated surface debris materials not present in an airburst.

Now consider the effects of, essentially, a radioactive, high-thermal-energy Category 5 hurricane hitting Lower Manhattan or any other area with a large number of modern, steel-frame “glass box” highrises.

okay folk this info about a dirty bomb or emp attack has been out for a while build your own Faraday cages for electronics and ground your cars just drive a 6 ft metal rod into the ground near where you park and attach a cheap set of jumper cables to it and your car after parking and the emp will travel into the earth and your car will run after the attack

If you are really worried about EMP and want to protect sensitive electronics from EMP, just leave them in your car. The tires conduct electricity, so no ground line is required. A car is the safest place to be during a lightning storm, and as long as the windows are closed, everything will be fine. As for the car radio, it has an external antenna, so may not fair as well. See my other post here for more info.

Auto tires do conduct electricity for 2 reasons: 1st, they often have steel belts or “threads” and 2nd, rubber does contain carbon which does conduct electricity. Of course rubber is an insulator but the atmosphere that the bolt travels through between ground and cloud is more of an insulator than that rubber in a tire, and the lightning has enough voltage differential to get through that atmosphere — so it will certainly get through the tire also.

What protects you in a car is that the bolt travels through the skin of the car when it grounds itself. That’s also why the car does not blow up.

No, tires are not a reliable means of conducting electricity. Ever notice those pieces of chain hanging under trucks and buses? They are there to disperse static electricity. Ever notice the admonition to not refuel your portable tank without first putting it on the ground? Same reason. Airplanes are required to attach a ground strap before refueling.

Yes: electrical fields must go to zero inside of a conductor. That’s one of the laws of electromagnetism. Any nonvanishing electrical field inside a conductor would instantly induce a current to negate the electrical field.

Your car may run, but it probably won’t be going anywhere– at least, not with you in it.

An attack would leave the roads impassable. Even if you were able to get around, your car would be commandeered by either law enforcement or criminals. Gas stations would be unable to pump fuel.

Stores would not be open– they would quickly be completely out of stock or already have been looted. There would be no water, fuel, food, transportation. Anybody who possessed those items would be defending them with his life.

That they would cease to exist is a feature not the bug. If millions died in the cause of destroying the mighty infidel then Heaven with Allah is assured for all. That’s why their leaders are batshit crazy. They don’t care how many fellow muslims are vaporized as long as the infidel is crippled or destroyed. Reason and logic are futile. Virile and vigorous action must be employed. We need to stop pussy footing around real threats and stick daggers into their plans. Or should I say, read some history? Man is not an angel.

but having their own country and people devastated by retaliation just in order to short out the U.S. power grid wouldn’t be seen as an even exchange, even for the most fanatical Muslim.

If Iran is going to launch any kind of nuclear attack, it wouldn’t be just to short out the power grid. It would be to kill a whole lot of people.

Look at that other fanatic, Osama bin Laden. He knew that terrorism requires the ability to wreak mass death on an enemy. He brought down the Twin Towers and killed thousands. He didn’t just cause a power outage.

EMP does NOT make sense as an end in itself. The main value of EMP is to blind an enemy prior to the actual full strike. (If the Soviets had started a nuclear attack, causing EMP first would have prevented most Americans from hearing the attack warning and getting directions from Civil Defense and the government, since their own radios and TVs would be shorted out.)

Actually, you’ve just described everyday life in most Islamic countries.

A straight EMP attack holds no appeal for the Islamists for this exact reason. They don’t want to “bring us down to their level”, i.e. about the 7th Century AD; our own “deep ecologists” have the corner on that market. The Islamists want us either converted, enslaved, or dead. An EMP attack accomplishes none of the above.

Also remember that any attack on the West is as much for propaganda “domestic consumption” within the Islamic world as it is for doing damage to the non-Islamic part. And the Islamists have to convince everyone else that they are all-powerful, “the true messengers of the Prophet”, to ensure that no one challenges them. (This is one major reason that the Islamists kill more Muslims than non-Muslims every year; terror must be maintained.)

Blacking out even the majority of the U.S., and killing a lot of people in hospitals, etc., will not impress people who have no electricity, no clean water, no doctors, or nothing much of anything else. To impress them with their power, the Islamists need a high and immediate body count, and the more spectacular the method by which it is obtained the better, from their POV. (Hence, 9/11.)

They don’t want us inconvenienced, or limited. They want us dead. There is a difference, both in planning and execution.

Which means that if they somehow do hit us with an EMP attack, you can be sure that it will just be the first step in a truly horrific escalation.

They could not. And just to be safe, we should add cobalt to the bomb intended for Mecca, so they can’t rebuild. Failing that, hit it 24 times: 3 Trident missiles with 8 475-kT nukes each. The 11+MT of blast and fallout will be overkill, for sure, but overkill is needed to make sure we not only level the city, but render it uninhabitable for at least a decade. Let them run suicide missions if they dare, not to kill us, but to rebuild their precious great mosque in a radiation hot zone.

The Iranians don’t give a damn about any other part of the Arab world. They are Persians, not Arabs and look upon Arabs with contempt. If you don’t believe me, ask any friends of Arab descent how Iranians feel about the rest of the Middle east,

There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding EMP and what is required to build a device capable of energy being described in this article. Iran is not capable of the construction, design or delivery being discussed.
However there is reason to harden our infrastructure…the Government has known this since starfish nuclear explosions in the early 1960′s. Unfortunately corporations went the route over profit over surviveability. The US electronic infrastructure is the weakest in the modern world. China, Russia, England, France, Germany, even Norway have much greater protection in their systems than USA, It has been our Achilles heel for 50 years and the Government has done nothing.

There is dis service when myth and fear are used to generate support…as soon as anyone starts to actually research what EMP consists of and how it truly works, much of what is being discussed here is dismissed outright. That is the problem when we sensationalize a real threat instead of presenting accurate information.

The government doesn’t have to do anything. Corporations and individuals who fail to prepare will certainly fare poorly in a post-EMP strike world. The hand of the market will force them to remain closed, while businesses and individuals who prepared adequately for the possibility will prosper and succeed.

The book Preppers Road March by Ron Foster gives a good fictional account of how a survivor after a CME solar event makes his way home from Atlanta after being stranded. Its a good fast read adventure story filled with survival tricks and skills.

An EMP attack on the whole US will require a very big nuke – a multimegaton device. One of Iran’s home-built uranium bombs is unlikely to do more than make us very angry if exploded in space. But other powers have big nukes, and Iran could have obtained an old Soviet 100 MT nuke and refurbished it.

The Soviets did not build any 100MT nukes. The biggest one they ever made, the Tsar Bomba, was a one-off demonstration with a yield of 50MT and it weighed 60,000 pounds, far beyond the biggest payload the Iranians could loft into space.

Remember, Øbama dismantled Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) both here and abroad in our allied countries. When you and your families are dying on the street, you’ll know who to curse with you last breath.

It’s obvious why this problem will not be addressed. Even on this forum. half the commenters think it won’t or can’t happen. Protection against this event was previously killed in committee by Lisa Murkowski Jeff Bingamon even though it is what Rumsfeld would term a “known known”: We and our enemies know what it will do, we and our enemies know how to do it, our enemies are publicly preparing to do it, but we are doing nothing. It would cost less than 100th of the first stimulus to harden most of our grid, but we won’t do it. And don’t blame the utility companies either; here in Illinois today our governor is vetoing a rate hike that would allow our electric company to upgrade its lines from 1960′s technology, much less harden against EMP or solar flares.

If you’ve seen the movie Iranium and if it’s a credible account of the present Iranium leadership’s belief system, it seems that the fact that Iran would cease to exist after such an attack is not a problem for Ahmanidjit and company. It will only create the proper situation for the 12th Imam to appear. As an earlier commenter said, “Feature not bug”. Although most major religions have a millenarian bent, modern Islam, apparently, is the only one that would consider giving the end of the world a head start.

Instead of reading Novels it might be best to read what E1, E2 and E3 are, reading the “critical national infrastructure report of 2008″, and The Oak Ridge National laboratory clarifications of EMP Myths. There are dozens of scientific and national reports already completed that detail and clarify myths and realities of EMP.
The USA Government does one thing very well ; researches and writes reports on just about every subject under the sun.

Iran does not have capacity to delivery what is being discussed, and anyone proposing this has not done their homework.

This does not mean we should not harden our infrastructure, we are 30 years behind the rest of the world in that regard. But using Iran as the reason will only divert attention and energy away from actually completing what we should have been doing the last 30 years.

“The FERC estimates that the cost for protecting the electric grid would add only 20 cents to the annual bill of the average rate-payer for a period of three years.”

WHAT???? Let’s use some common sense here. There are about 300 million persons in the U.S. This would translate to perhaps 100 million households (ratepayers). At 20 cents per household per year, this would recover a grand total of $60 million dollars over 3 years!!!!!

Yes. But $60M over 3 years would be perfectly sufficient. You see, that is just what would be required to pay the interest on the loan for those 1st 3 years. For simplification, assume simple interest with a backloaded loan (so only pay principal in those 3 years) and you could borrow $650M (paying $20M per year interest). $650M would be plenty to get started, with lots of gravy for politically connected contractors.

Further. Protection against lightning strikes provides some protection against EMP. I have designed EMP hardened military eqpt. If it can take a lightning hit it is on the way to EMP protection except in the most dire cases. And no. I’m not giving out numbers to anyone. If the FBI wants to talk to me about it they better take me down town and prove their bonafides. Because I’m not accepting ID. They could be fake.

Yet another tragedy of 9/11 is there loss of focus from the EMP commission which had it’s first report in 2001 (http://empcommission.org/) It’s since been left on the sidelines, but I would encourage everyone to at least read the 62 page executive summary (2004).
IMO, this is a very real threat despite what we know – and more critically – what we don’t know. The incentive is there from a host of state and non-state groups (pg19). The capability by some like North Korea or Iran is there (pg 10). Sadly, since the cold war ended – our military hasn’t keep up the hardening of many systems (pg 47). This all reads like a nightmare scenario that is portrayed in ‘One Second After’.
To say that we ‘think’ it won’t happen won’t mean much the moment after it does.

The real solution to this is not through government! The power companies will make the necessary modifications on their own. This is their product, they will protect it and most have already done so. Most electric power plants do NOT use silicon wafer technology to control plant output and are therefore not susceptable to EMP. We should NOT support this legislation, and further we should oppose the government’s attempt to hijack the power grid by imposing Obama’s grid modernization plans. It is not broke folks so please do not try to fix it.

As usual, I judge the comments carry more expertise than the article. To be sure, EMP is a real threat to the American grids. (We have three: east of the Rockies, west of the Rockies, and Texas.) Iran does not now have the technology to threaten our grids, the technical problems are formidable and long term. This religious enemy does not value human life so our certain megadeath retaliation, the mutually assured destruction policy against the USSR, is not a defense. A high altitude thermonuclear detonation will cause havoc; it will not fry all radios, computers, and electronics. It will fry main transformers in power plants; big ones weigh 500 – 800 tons, and a spare sitting nearby and shielded would be vital. But our biggest problem is that we have driven our power industry out of business in America. Our grid was built in the 50s and 60s; your PC is powered by machinery which has been spinning since your grandfathers install them. If we need a main transformer in a few years, we may have to buy it from China. Hopefully they will not be the same nation that shot the rocket over Kansas.

In the scale of future dangers to America, I would rate EMP less dangerous than the suicidal energy policy in place in Washington D. C.

I agree with this assessment, and would like to point out that Iran, if it presently has nuclear weapons, only has relatively small fission weapons: it really takes a fairly large thermonuclear weapon to produce a massive EMP. This hype in this article is way overblown.

All diesels will run just fine after an EMP event. So would all non-electronic-ignition vehicles. So would the bulk of the more modern vehicles, unless you park your car nosed-up to a metal post or a building.

Home generators will still work, as will the larger construction sizes. Chipless motors should be fine. Stick your laptop, along with any other electronics you want to protect, into a spare microwave oven – a great Faraday cage – and if you do have a home generator, make sure now that it can be wired to, and handle, your big freezer.

Plus, if anyone can technologically generate a big enough EMP pulse to cause widespread effect, they can more easily just hit us with nukes, which would do far more damage – smaller scope, but hugely more damaging effects.

Besides, Allah would probably he happier with mushroom clouds than with our blenders and vibrators shutting off.

The high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) is defined as a series of electromagnetic waveforms that are generated from a nuclear detonation at altitudes above 30 km and propagate to the Earth’s surface.

You don’t need that large of an explosive. Also, they can be tailored to optimize the EMP output.

The major problem would be with the loss of the power grid. Even though the entire U.S. grid would probably not be directly affected, the loss of one significant area could lead to a cascade, such as happened in New York a while back. The EMP Commission’s overall power system conclusion was: “Widespread functional collapse of the electric power system in the area affected by EMP is likely.”

To accomplish widespread EMP damage, you need an explosive force of a quality and a quantity neither of which the Iranians are capable of delivering, either right now, or in the foreseeable future.

If we’re speaking of a generalized threat, yes, other societies are capable of doing this, but they have an apparent less-than-compelling drive to do so. If we’re speaking of the Iranians, as this article does, then, while they appear to have the strong desire to hurt us, the capability to cause us harm through EMP is not there.

Just as when a nearby lightning strike knocks out some household electronics but not others, so too an EMP will have an unpredictable effect. While the characteristics of the Pulse itself is different than a lightning strike, it has an important similarity: it has a lot of energy that will be be transferred to electronic equipment. But recall that we have a lot of electronic and electricity related infrastructure that gets struck by lightning and keeps on ticking. These include cell towers and power lines. Because an enemy cannot predict how it will cripple us, or if it will merely inconvenience us rather than cripple, EMP makes a lousy weapon, except an economic one.

But that uncertainty has a flip side: EMP may indeed cripple our economy. But like Y2K, I think there is more hype to EMP than real effect.

If we are in the process of reworking our electric grid, now is a great time to make it as resilient as is feasible against EMP.

One thing is for certain: whoever sets off an EMP bomb will only get one chance. If that happens on a clear day, the certain risk is in how many people will be blinded. Damage from EMP is just uncertain.

THESE FANATICS WILL CONTINUE WITH EVEN MORE RADICALISM IF THEY ARE ATTACKED BUT NOT TOPPLED WHICH THE IRANIAN PEOPLE ARE WAITING PATIENTLY TO DO SO BY THE HELP AND SOME SUPPORT FROM ABROAD… THE PEOPLE ARE JUST WAITING, THAT DAY IS VERY CLOSE.. BE PATIENT BUT DO NOT TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THE MULLA AND ISLAMISTS RUNNING THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATION IN IRAN

There are some very clever people trying to stop an attack on Iran. You’re lucky you have Obama as President. Vote in a Republican and let them borrow more money to fund a war with Iran and Syria? Are you mad? Wars cost money and you’re broke!!!

This is not a possibility, This will be a part of our history as an attack on a scale which will probably out due HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI atomic attacks. A SEPT 11 mentality which is motivated by fanatics of our Country IRAN who were behind September 11th 2001 attacks and to bring America and western nations down which for 32 yrs they have been yelling and chanting and we are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg through some of the damages they are causing to us by the proxy wars on US.
Sept. 11 2001 will be considered fireworks compared to this tragedy If and when Gd forbid THIS does happen. I as an Iranian am sorry to be in this situation/predicament to have to warn others against my own MOTHER LAND, of the dangers these barbarian terrorists occupying our land illegaly for 32 years and Yet these other nations are sitting around a Fruit and BAR B Q table with them to find a solution to try to negotiate with them and appease a bunch of Fanatic radical mullahs and sheikhs. Shame is all it brings to mind.

O You Ship of Fools. You debate whether Iran can send up missles to cause a atomic explosion 300 miles over the U.S. The book “One Second After” was based on well researched facts that indicated Iran could do it.
But what about the “CME” Coronal Mass Ejection? Uh-Oh, that’s just the sun doing what it does for thousands of years.

Same result.

We stand at the prespice of western civilization going down to destruction.

Whether 30% or 10% of people live (the true estimate is 10%) in North America, Europe, Japan, China, or any countries whose electrical systems didn’t fried. The human race will survive, only it will be without America (depends on how fast we rebuild from a 1790 infrastructure).

Automobiles that are not in operation are unlikely to be damaged, but those in operation may experience damage and problems in the operation of the vehicle– but it is probable that most of the damage would be caused by loss of control and subsequent crashes rather than an EMP event.

There is a risk to the traffic control system with a widespread event, but not so much with a small event, as the localized control can be handed off. There is a section on the planes that is also quite interesting.

The report seems to indicate that the biggest threat is to the electrical grid, and that the impact it has on so many industries is the great unknown. There is a section on the shipping (sea) and cargo industry, emergency services and much more. It is not alarmist, and seems to be pretty straightforward.

But much is unknown, because there is no model that is usefull for a powerful, wide area event. Apparently, it is not possible to model how so many electronic, computerized electricity dependent grids and varities of equipment will interact in an EMP event.

I am qualified to speak to this important posting as someone with long personal experience in Iran, as an author who carefully researched his book “Iran Covenant” as well as the writer of a Daily Caller article on EMP named “Its’s Time to Play the War Card”(http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/10/its-time-to-play-the-war-card/ )

In short, Reza Khalili is right to sound the alarm. Even our distracted Congress is starting to take notice with a pending bill to defend out national grid by stockpiling transformers; we must hope that it does not fall prey to election politics. I suggest that readers discard many of the comments above, especially those that arise from personal agendas, and instead do their own research into EMP. The fascinating book, “One Second After” is a novel based on fact. On the other hand, the report of the Congressional Commission into EMP is nothing but hard fact. Read both, and urge your representative to be concerned about our safety.

Your book is reviewed once on Amazon. You sound as if you’re plugging your book here. I think people are now aware there is a whole industry devoted to hyping up non-existent threats to justify huge amounts of money being given to private companies and corporations to fund wars or counter non-existent threats.

I remember the rubbish I was fed by the media in the run up to the war in Iraq. The same thing is happening now with Syria and Iran. Why are North Korea not a threat? They CAN reach Alaska with a nuclear missile yet no-one goes on about them. Ahh… they have no oil and their relationship with China makes them teflon coated. Your mad hawks think Syria and Iran are “doable” …. they’re wrong.

Follow the money. What is EMPACT America, the organization to which the author of this post belongs? It is a lobbying organization on the issue of EMP which describes itself as a “bipartisan, non-profit organization for citizens concerned about protecting the American People from a nuclear or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe”. Its website features its Board of Directors, many of whom are affiliated with defense contractors, security consultants, or lobbying organizations. This sure looks like another “grassroots” lobbying organization ginning up fear for the financial gain for its members. EMP is real, but certainly nothing like the threat that EMPACT America describes.

Here here! Americans, do you want to borrow more money from China to cover the cost of this? Come to think of it, the Chinese would love you to be scared to death of EMP attacks since you’ll borrow money from them to pay for all the precautions leading to the US having to “suck it up” even more when they use their veto in the UN security council.

You can’t afford a replacement for a space shuttle. What makes you think you can afford to protect yourselves against an EMP attack?

Most people on the planet won’t be affected. They’re too poor and don’t have electricity or running water but survive anyway. Get some window boxes and packs of seeds.

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. We have lost control of bomb production. From time to time major cities around the world and in the USA will be nuked. Get used to it, it is inevitable.

Dr. Graham, Chair of the EMP Commission report to Congress estimates that a nuke detonation 250 miles above Kansas would take out all three US power grids and that there would be less than a 20% survival rate due to severe restrictions on the production and distribution of food. The EMP Commission studied this for about 7 years, I think the Chair knows what he is talking about.

Iran has a space program. They have two satellites orbiting the earth at 250 miles high or higher. They are now building larger rockets for larger payloads. They will one day have the nukes to put in them and when the time is right, probably at a major anniversary of Allah ascending, they will detonate all and take out the USA and EU. Israel will probably receive a direct ground burst.

Iran is first in line to purchase the Club-K Container Missile system from a Russian arms mnf. It is a standard 40′ container that holds 4 cruise missiles, nuke capable, that can be launched from a ship, train or truck. Range is about 250 miles. One container would take out NY, DC, Philly & Boston. Another could take out SF, LA, and SD.

A repeat of the Carrigan event could happen any time.

A cyber attack is possible any time.

When the grid goes down it doesn’t matter if your car runs, there will be no more fuel. Within weeks the country will be overrun by starving mobs who will loot every warehouse, townhouse, farmhouse, hen house and dog house that they can find and murder, rape and torture anyone they find.

The solution: 3 years stored food, non hybrid seeds, independent water supply, solar power, completely out of site until after the die off and then, if you survive, start over.

The Normalcy Bias will keep almost all from grasping the gravity of this and so, those who prepare shall inherit the earth. But if you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your children and grand children.

Remember, when did Noah build the ARK? Before the flood. BEFORE THE FLOOD!

my feelings are its going to be a solar flare that does it not a nuke and when it does happen those of us that have prepped are going to have to help out many that havent ive been trying to put up a bunch of stuff that i know that we are going to need to have ive got enuff garden seeds to plant a few acres of veggies have a generator extra gas for it a chicken coop and plans to build another 1 next spring we are stocking up on canning jars and canned foods im clearing out a area to build a pig pen for next spring we will be raiseing our own pork and chickens so that we will have plenty of eggs and the extra roosters we get will be our meat birds i do belive that if a emp was to hit us and take out the grid its going to take more than a year to restore power in this country thats why i have a woodstove for back up heatting we had better be planning to live like our great great grand parents did no phone no lights no cars that means we will be haveing to help each other out to make it but i belive the people in the cities are the ones that will get hit the hardest the ones in the country that are on wells and septic systems will be much better off i put in a hand pump on my well just in case i cant use my electric pump i will still have water to drink clean and flush the toilets in my area we have a few darry farms around and a few farmers that raise beef animals to sell so im sure that we will have eggs to trade for other foods we will need and i know that the people out in my area will be doing lots better than the ones in the city will we have gardens and hunting plus what ever we raise for other meats im not saying we will have it easy but we will get through this if we work together so id say get to know the people that live around you some day your lives will depend on each other cause if the grid ever does go out who knows what will happen i know we have a few emergency room nurses a great vol firedepartment here in town a few emts and a few doctors its a small town but not to far out from the city so that we could help out if we needed to

A sensible post and strategy, not because Iran will ever attack the US with an EMP device but because the US$ is on the way to becoming worthless and chaos will be the result. Unfortunately, you may simply have made yourself a target for those less prepared than you but heavily armed.

The state of the US economy is more of a threat than an EMP attack. It’s obvious to outsiders the US is wrecking itself and people who don’t like the US simply have to watch and be patient.

Your warmongers have bankrupted you so THEY can have a nice lifestyle …. what HAVE the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan achieved for the US? How are you better off? What actually were the chances YOU or anyone you love would have been killed by an Afghan goat herd?

There are people who want you to be scared so you’ll tolerate your money being given to weapons manufacturers rather than hospitals and schools.

EMP is the scariest thing to think about. The thought of having no power or anything is crazy. What’s even crazier is to think that so many people are not prepared. At all. EMPact America is a blog I came across a few months ago when I heard about EMP and wanted to start getting prepared. For preparedness month they are having a podcast every weekday in September at 6pm. This Wednesday though they are having Congressman Roscoe Bartlett on at 12pm eastern time, live. I think that all of these shows are going to be very informative and great to listen to. Here’s the link if you want to check out Roscoe Bartlett or some of the other podcasts this month: http://empactradio.org/pvp/episode67-congressman-roscoe-bartlett/

OK, we all seem to have some knowledge of what an EMP attack could do, and at this point, we’ve already decided for ourselves if the threat is real or supposed. Regardless, there have been a fair share of disasters around the world and even our own gov’t tells us not to expect any aid for 24-72 hours after a disaster. Most people panic when the power goes out, let alone everything! When people don’t know how to process info, it confuses and panics them. I’m prepping, for what, I really don’t know, maybe for when shtf or my own preservation in this economy. I certainly don’t know if I could last a year if it were TEOTWAWKI. It’d be worse than camping out for a year or forever!
I just think the threat is there, but there are other threats that seem more plausible to prepare for these days.

I’ve been researching about this type of stuff and I’ve been listening to EMPact America’s radio blogs every Wednesday. They are extremely informative and great to listen to. They are all about protecting ourselves, our things, and getting prepared for tragedies to happen. Tomorrow, Wednesday the 9th, Peter Huessy is going to be on their radio show for the sixth time. I think you guys will find this really great to listen to. Here’s the link for more information and to listen to it when it airs: http://empactradio.org/pvp/episode74-peter-huessy/

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The biggest threat the US faces is from the people who make you all so terrified of low level or theoretical threats it becomes politically OK to transfer yet more tax payers’ money to corporations or researchers to counter this perceived threat. Imagine someone who insures themselves against so many unlikely events they go bust.

There is an awful lot of money to be made making people scared. Where was the threat that got you involved in the Afghan and Iraq wars you couldn’t afford? It would actually be cheaper and less harmful to allow a few planes to be hijacked. Fewer civilians would die than the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The people running your foreign policy are not smart enough. In Iraq, you removed Saddam who kept a lid on the pro Iranian Shias and in Afghanistan, your Koran burning is the best recruitment campaign the Taliban could ever dream of.

Good EMP fiction is an intelligent way to prepare yourself mentally for the unthinkable. It is actually a recognized genre these days. The strength of books like “One Second After” about the effects of an EMP in the US or “Golan – a novel about Israel’s next war” about a post EMP Israel is to make it real and kindle our creative imagination. Agreed, some of the offerings in the field are survivalist fantasies, but others are intelligent “what if” scenarios that force you to think and get past the knee-jerk “it can’t happen” reflex.